am I stitching up seams, or pulling on triggers?

JACK

Jack can see the way Flora starts to hold onto herself in all the ways he'd learned to recognise over the seasons of their being together - he'd seen it before in the House of Midnight, and on the deck of the small boat where her mother had sequestered her away. As such, he grounds himself at the foot of it, his posture as open as her own is closed off, his expression schooled into the sort of neutral she'll have seen on him dozens of times.

As she speaks, though, of course he isn't immune to the way her words land. The urge to scoff is something he has to bite back, his fingers brushing across the knuckles of his other hand as he listens until Flora has said all she needs to. "An' you're okay with still bein' around him?" he asks quietly.

"I don't mean whether you think you can trust yourself. Either you can or you can't - ain't like it'll be somethin' hidden if it happens." It's not a matter of trust for a telepath so much as it's whether Flora is warning him or simply informing him. "But you don't believe he's not gonna be waitin' in the wings for me to fuck up? To rescue you from this bad decision? 'Cause I'd place a bet he will be."

fight so dirty but you love so sweet
talk so pretty but your heart got teeth

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!